Allowing computer-based access to stored information can provide a variety of useful functionality to users. For example, unified messaging (“UM”) systems typically allow users to access multiple types of stored information (e.g., received emails, voice mails, faxes, etc.) in a uniform manner, such as via a single type of connection (e.g., a voice-based connection from an analog or digital wireless telephone, such as using CDMA, GSM or GPRS), or in limited situations via one of multiple different types of connections (e.g., one or more additional data-based types of connections, such as using TCP/IP or WAP). In addition, some UM systems allow users to perform various functionality related to such accessed information, such as to reply to a message of one type with a response message of another type (e.g., respond to a voice mail with an email, or vice versa).
While computer-assisted accessing of information and related functionality (e.g., accessing of UM information and/or functionality) is typically designed to work well when using a fixed station on an internal network (e.g., a desktop computer attached to an internal LAN or a telephone set connected to a PBX), a variety of problems can arise when accessing such information from computing devices that have less capabilities (e.g., many wireless telephones and wireless handheld computing devices) and/or that are not physically present on the internal network. For example, when a user of a wireless phone has accessed an email message from a data server (e.g., an email server) via its data mode and wishes to reply to the email message, there is typically no convenient text input method to supply a response email. In addition, wireless phones and other wireless computing devices that have such data mode connections typically do not allow audio messages (e.g., voice mail in a UM mailbox) to be retrieved and played through the data-based connection. Similarly, a user of a wireless phone that is connected to a voice server (e.g., a voice messaging system or an Interactive Voice Response system) via its voice mode will not typically be able to engage in text-based or other data-based communications over the voice connection.
Even if standard existing wireless computing devices were able to be configured to provide various types of information access and functionality (e.g., the ability to originate, reply to, and listen to messages stored in email) for UM systems in limited situations, such configurations would require additional hardware beyond that of an enterprise UM system and would not typically provide full UM functionality. Similarly, while some specialized wireless computing devices provide simultaneous voice and data channels (e.g., devices using the i-mode service), such functionality is not available to standard existing wireless computing devices, and the multiple channels typically are independent of each other in terms of the information received.
Accordingly, it would be beneficial to provide users of standard existing client computing devices (e.g., wireless phones) with the ability to access a variety of types of information and functionality in an efficient and coordinated manner, such as to access UM systems and gain full UM functionality without requiring additional specialized hardware. Specific examples of beneficial functionality include providing users with a capability to create a voice reply to an email message displayed on a wireless computing device and providing users with a capability to listen to voice messages stored in a UM mailbox when using wireless data access to the mailbox, although more generally it would be beneficial to provide integration with an enterprise UM system from a wireless computing device in order to make the full feature set of the UM system available. Moreover, coordinated multi-mode access to a wide variety of other types of systems providing information and/or functionality also would provide significant additional benefits.